Had a black friend recently return from a trip to Japan.
He loved all things Japanese. He read manga. He watched anime. Loved sushi. He saved for years for the trip. Two weeks in Japan. Included Tokyo Disneyland.
He was not the same when he got back.
He said he never understood racism...real racism...until he went to Japan. He said he felt like an exhibit, an animal on display. He was stared at and most of them were angry. He says that at more than one restaurant he was ignored by the staff, especially when they were outside of the more urban areas. He learned a lot of Japanese so he could communicate, but he said they felt very free to correct him, when he saw white tourists also mispronouncing words the natives smiled and encouraged them. He couldn’t wait to go home.
He did say that it gave him a new perspective on racism in the US. We, he now says, are not really racist.
It probably doesn’t help that a number of US military bases have lots of blacks and those blacks have committed more than their fair share of rapes and robberies. When I was in Okinawa, black guys DID have problems being served. White guys did too because the natives were not too fond of any military guys, but they really disliked the black military guys.
Still, in my travels, I find the US and the UK the least racist places I’ve been. Wish a lot more American blacks would try living overseas for a while, including in Africa. Think they’d come crawling back looking forward to being in the “Good Old USA”!